Why We Love... Triangle

In this series, Tickety Books editor Roman Milisic unpacks the secrets of great children's books.

Ambiguous Geometry 

There are picture books that entertain children, and there are picture books that quietly rewire the way children think. Triangle, by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen (Candlewick, 2023), manages to be both — and it does it with a sneaky trick.

First of all, let me state: Irreverence is good. Not only do kids naturally love the irreverent, but it helps teach independent thinking, develops tolerance for ambiguity, and shows (ELI3) that systems are constructed, not sacred. Which our kids can take into this fragile future. Barnett and Klassen are the kings of irreverence. But I’m not talking fart jokes. They are much cleverer.

The Object

Pick up Triangle. The covers are thick and satisfying, the right-hand corners rounded off to make something very tactile. And the cover (irreverently) bears no title — just Triangle himself, staring out at you, with those eyes.

"Klassen Eyes"

You’ll remember those eyes from I Want My Hat Back, and Klassen’s other Hat books. Klassen's characters never quite look like they want to be there. Triangle is no exception: He looks like he just walked absent-mindedly across the cover only to notice that he’d gone into frame on somebody’s photograph. Now he’s just standing there awkwardly, not quite sure what to do next. It’s like taking a portrait of a four year old: "Hold still! Fine, you can move now, that’s the best we’re going to get."

The result is this character with magnificent ambivalence — blank enough to project anything onto, yet loaded with subtext. Is that rising panic on Triangle's face, or something more placid?

Shapes With No Names

Klassen’s scenes are equally unique. The landscapes in Triangle are rendered in muted greys, greens, and blacks, conveying something between a Mad Max hellscape and a potato-stamp rendition of Zion National Park. The scenery feels ancient and sparse, and wonderfully vivid.

The Sound of Sneakiness

The plot is mischief, plain and simple. Triangle crosses the terrain and plays a sneaky trick on Square, and the book revels in it. The communal hiss at Square's cave is irresistible. Every kid joins in.

One small linguistic pleasure deserves its own mention. The phrase sneaky trick recurs throughout, and Barnett clearly loves it — he uses the phrase half a dozen times in the course of the book. It's not quite onomatopoeia, but it is sound symbolism: the sibilant slither of sneaky, then the surprise percussion of trick. You can literally hear the sneaky trick.

When the trick is discovered, a side-eye showdown goes down — no words, just a long stare-off between two characters — the tension is almost unbearable. And then it breaks into a Benny Hill-style chase sequence, which has the readers fingers running back through the landscape from right to left. Klassen creates such a tangible world that he can literally hand it to the reader.

A Book About Unreliable Narrators (For Four-Year-Olds)

Triangle is a book that physically pulls you in. Which brings us to the final page. "But do you believe him?" Barnett leaves us with a question — and suddenly Triangle becomes a conversation about narrator reliability that can last long after the book is closed. How did Square feel about the trick?

Triangle is irreverently beautiful, mischievous, linguistically alive, and interactive. It's a sneaky trick of a book. And yes, you should believe it.

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